(Un)Important Programming Note

 Ms. Spenser and I are going on a little vacation, so there will be no updates for a few weeks. When we get back, I may continue as usual, I may do some kind of overhaul, or I may abandon this entirely. After all, this is supposed to be a blog about my Netflix queue and cocktails, Netflix DVDs are going away (and streaming queues suck), and I'm all out of cocktails.

I do worry how this will affect all of my zero readers, but I have to be true to my (lack of) vision.

I will still be watching videos - on streaming (currently, we only subscribe to Amazon Prime), from the library, bought as physical media, or whatever comes along. But will I still be blogging? Could I just start doing Letterboxd reviews (I am going to try to export my Netflix History over there)? Any other suggestions?

Or maybe I'll just carry on. I enjoy reading my old posts, even if nobody else did. And I am closing in on 2000 posts - maybe I'll just coast on momentum.

Soap Opera

Duplicity (2009) was another more or less random choice - as Netflix DVD service winds down, the choice is collapsing - the Saved queue has disappeared, no new DVDs are showing up - so I am looking at my queue (107 movies long) and pulling out stuff I don't expect to seek out elsewhere. This looked like a sexy, tricky thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Why not?

It starts at a party in Dubai. Owen tries to seduce Roberts, and she shuts him down, but they wind up in bed together. Then she drugs him and steals the secret documents he has hidden under the bed. Owen was MI6, Roberts CIA. 

Five years later, Owen is working private security, delivering a package. He spots Roberts on the street and chases her down. She claims she doesn't know him and they quarrel. Then he discovers that she is his partner on this one. She is disgusted - how could she be saddled with such a bad spy? But they do start to work together. 

The companies they are working for are soap and cosmetics firms. At first I thought - ooh, clever fronts. But no, they really are two soap manufacturers who are bitter rivals. Owen is handled by Duke (Denis O'Hare) whose boss is Dick (Paul Giamatti). Dick and Duke. Roberts is working for their rival - or is she?

Flashback to three years ago, it shows them meeting in Rome for the first time since Dubai (?). They do the same argument - she claims she doesn't know him, he claims they met in Dubai - word for word. And again they fall into bed. They don't trust each other, and that's what makes it so hot. 

I guess this is a real thriller, but when I found out they were working for soap companies, I realized that this is really a Rom-Com, disguised as a thriller. The high-tech espionage, appropriate for military secrets, applied to a new skin cream is what gave it away. Also, Paul Giamatti's goofy paranoid aggressiveness. 

So there are several more flashbacks, revealing more schemes and lies. Hope that's not a spoiler. It ends in one final stupid twist - I'm not sure whether the twists are supposed to be a strength of the movie, or silly scaffolding to hang the sexual tension on. Also, not sure the tension was as palpable as they thought it was, even with super-hot Roberts and Owen.

So, as far as I was concerned, not much of a thriller, not much of a rom-com. But it was kind of funny as a spy parody, and the leads were certainly pleasant enough. Ms. Spenser skipped this entirely, and I wouldn't blame you if you did too. But I kind of enjoyed it. 

Girls, Girls, Girls

Here's one that Ms. Spenser found: Bring on the Girls (1945). It's an Eddie Bracken/Veronica Lake/Sonny Tufts semi-musical. We couldn't find it anywhere to rent or buy, but there was a copy on YouTube. 

It starts with Bracken coming home from his job at the factory - he is supporting the war effort. His home is a mansion - he owns the factory, among many others. He goes to see his fiancee, and finds her canoodling with his cousin. After he sends them packing, he laments that all the women he meets just love him for his money. So he decides to join the navy anonymously. His family object and demand that he take the nephew of a family lawyer, Sonny Tufts, as a minder.

They ship off to Miami for training, and he discovers that they will be staying at a fancy hotel, commandeered as a barracks. When he asks the CO if this won't make the men get soft, he gets his unit assigned to cleanup duty, making him not well loved. The unit excludes him from their shore leave plans. But when he gets them into a fancy nightclub, claiming to have won some money at dice, they all become his pal. 

The maitre-d' recognizes him, but Bracken tells him to keep quiet. But he mentions it to cigarette girl Veronica Lake. She sets her cap for him, telling him she's really a singer, and plays a shy family girl.

When Tufts hears about this, he goes to the nightclub to check this dame out. He didn't get a name from Bracken, so he heads for the singer - Marjorie Reynolds - pretending to be a small time newspaper reporter. She tells him her life story: She's a rich girl who just sings as a hobby. He assumes this is phony, but it turns out to be true. He also mades several heavy advances, which she rebuffs. So he approves. He also sees Lake passing by, and recognizes her. Tells the manager that they better count the silver - she's a crooked.

So there's the setup: Rich Bracken is in love with gold-digger Lake. Lake has history with Tufts. And Reynolds has the same problem Bracken does: guys only want her for her money. Pretty obvious how this goes. There are some musical numbers - Sonny sings two. He sort of talk-sings his way through with an interesting bluesy rhythm, but I'd say the songs are better than the singer, and they weren't that great. 

Bracken had two absolute classic movies: Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail, the Conquering Hero. We always wanted to see more of him. His patriotic, enthusiastic weakling character is a lot of fun. I don't think he has any other real masterpieces, but this was pleasant fun anyway.

SPOILER - but you probably figured it out: The two rich characters end up with each other, concentrating wealth. At least Tufts, as a lawyer, won't be making his wife Lake live in romantic poverty.

65 Million Reasons

We watched the worst-named movie of the current century: 65 (2023).

We meet Adam Driver on a beach on some strange world (actually not particularly strange). He is discussing his upcoming exploratory space trip. He doesn't want to leave his sick daughter, but his wife insists that they need the money to pay for her treatment. We can tell that they are members of an alien species because they stitching on their normal clothes is a little funny, and they have strange customs regarding money and medical treatment. 

A while into his flight, an asteroid knocks the spaceship off course. It breaks in half in the atmosphere of a planet that a text crawl informs us is Earth, 65 million years ago. His part of the ship includes a stasis capsule with a young girl (Arianna Greenblatt). The other part, 17 km away, includes the other passengers and a functioning escape pod. 

So he and the girl start the (not that long) trek to the other half, atop a mountain. On the way, they encounter prehistoric fauna (big bugs and smallish dinosaurs), normal looking forests, and the usual prehistoric problems - tar pits. Although Driver and Greenblatt can't speak the same language (they come from the same planet, but different regions), they bond. She needs him to help find her parents (they are definitely dead) and she reminds him of his sick daughter (who is also dead - the treatment didn't go well). 

To top it all off - that asteroid? It's the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. 

The actiony stuff, all the dinosaurs and so on, was surprisingly weak for a modern blockbuster wannabe. I thought Hollywood had that nailed down. The idea that the characters were supposed to be aliens was very tenuous - couldn't they have had forehead ridges like Star Trek aliens? Or technology that didn't look like it came from 2001? But the father/surrogate daughter dynamic worked surprisingly well. It made the movie very watchable for us. I note here that Quantumania was also based on that dynamic. I must say I prefer it to the daddy issues plots that are so common. 

Night of the Comet

Coherence (2014) turned out to be one of the more interesting SF/horror/mindfuck movies we've seen recently. We were even more impressed when we found out how it was made.

It starts with eight friends getting together for a dinner party. We learn a bit about them - the main drama is that one of them is bringing a flirty vixen who used to be sleeping with another of them, who is now in a relationship with Emily Foxler (who is sort of the protagonist). We also learn that this is the night that a dramatic comet will be visible.

Then the lights go out. After getting some candles going, one of the guests tries to call his brother, a physicst, who told him to call if he noticed anything weird when the comet passed. The phones don't work, and the entire neighborhood is dark - except one house a few blocks away. Two of the guests decide to venture over there to see if their phones work. The rest of the group is very much against this trip.

They come back, looking beaten and freaked. They have a small box that turns out to contain a ping-pong paddle and photos of everyone in the group with random numbers on the back - including one photo that could have only been taken that night. The adventurers don't want to talk about what they saw, but finally divulge: The other house looks just like this, with a dinner table set for eight. They got scared, grabbed the box and ran, falling down and getting a cut. At this point, the guy who owns the house remembers they have a generator and starts it up. Now their house has lights too.

They decide to write a note to the people in the other house to stick under their door. There's a knock on their door, and a note is slipped under - the exact same note that they are writing. 

Through this all, they are generally frightened to open the door or interact with anyone outside their group. However, it's not like their group is all that sweet and kindly.

I don't want to spoil this for any of my readers, but I don't think there are any. So -SPOILER- They realize that the people who leave the house don't come back to the same reality as the one they left. In the new house, the box may contain a glove or a comb. The numbers on the back of the photos mat be different. This all relates to the physicist brother's theories of quantum coherence. So Foxler, who is freaking out over all the negativity, starts looking for a house where people are calm and nice. When she finds one, she kills her other self - and lives happily ever after?

So, interesting reality bender. Some of the odder details, like the ping-pong paddle pay off well. There aren't as many of these puzzles that get get solved later on as you might hope. There is also the undercurrent of panic related to the outside world. Is this social commentary on the fear of chaos in a disaster? Like the rioting and looting expected (but not always found) in a blackout or flood. Or was it just the way writer/director James Ward Byrkit assumes things are?

It was interesting to find out, after we'd watched, that Byrkit made this movie as an exercise in minimal resources. He got eight actors and filmed in his own living room with no crew - just himself and a camera. He also had a minimal script - just notes on what he needed to achieve in a scene. He would give the actors a note on what they needed to do, and let them improvise - and then didn't tell the other actors. 

It was interesting to add this to World on a Wire and Ultrasound - although those were mind control movies, this is an alternate reality scenario. It's fun how much movies can do to alter reality. 

In Space!

Lockout (2012) was a pretty standard action movie: We were expecting something like Escape from New York in space. We pretty much got that, but the minimum possible version.

It starts with Guy Pearce getting bet up. He's in an interrogation room and every time he gives a wise-ass answer, he get socked. Which is pretty much every answer. He is a CIA spy who apparently shot his senior partner when a pickup went bad - then the McGuffin went missing. Last seen when sketchy Tim Plester took it on a subway train.

For his crime, Pearce is going to be sent to an orbital prison where he'll serve his sentence in suspended animation. But first, Maggie Grace, the President's daughter, is on a fact-finding mission to see if this process is safe. One of the worst prisoners, Vincent Regan, is woken up and brought to her to interview. He of course gets a gun and takes her prisoner. He quickly releases all the prisoners and takes all the good guys hostage. One of the other prisoners is Joe Gilgun, a total loony and Regan's brother. It's Jigsaw and Loony Bin Jim all over again. 

So the plan is now to send Pearce up to the prison secretly to bring Grace back in an escape pod, and to hell with everyone else. But Grace is intent on saving the rest of the hostages. When Gilgun finally goes nutso and kills all the hostages (and several prisoners, including his brother), she is allowed to talk to her father. "Everyone is dead; blow the place out of the sky". 

But of course, they don't. Pearce manages to get her back to Earth, and she also decodes Plester's ravings to find the hidden McGuffin. So the mystery at the start of the show is solved, as if anyone cares.

Because we are there for the action. Which is fine, although I don't think there was much that was especially cool. This was produced and conceived by Luc Besson, so we could have expected better. Finally, there is a scene when the government sends fighter craft to attack the prison, which has guns to shoot back - And it looks like it comes straight out of Star Wars. Like, shot for shot. Not an homage - a rip off. Lost some respect there.

Still, a Guy Pearce one-man-army actioner in space. If that's good enough for you, go for it.

Who Wants to Eat Flies?

Since we're pretty solid Nic Cage anti-fans, I wasn't sure about Renfield (2023) - but we watched anyway.

It features Nic Cage as Count Dracula, but really stars Nicholas Hoult as Renfield. There's a nice history of his relation to the count, done in the style of the Todd Browning movie. In the current day, Dracula is recovering from sunburn, while Hoult is going to support meetings for people in abusive relationships. He has been combining these problems by killing off the abusive partners and feeding them to the count. But Dracula wants the blood of innocents - happy couples, nuns, virgin cheerleaders. And he will get them.

Meanwhile, Awkwafina is a cop whose father was killed by the violent and politically connected Lobo family. She has been put on traffic detail so that she won't try for vengeance. But Lobo heir Ben Schwartz runs a sobriety checkpoint with a car full of coke, and she arrests him - which is not something you can do in this city. If you do, you face the matriarch of the Lobos, Shohreh Aghdashloo.

So there's your setup. Hoult's in a co-dependent relationship, Awkwafina's an honest cop surrounded by graft, and Cage is Dracula. I sort of felt like they were all in different movies - Awkwafina playing serious and earnest, as well as honest and noble, Cage doing a serious Lugosi/Schrek/everyone else impression, and Hoult tying it together as a Victorian learning about modern self-help and empowerment philosophy. They all do this very well - Hoult holds the center stage very well, Cage is an interesting vampire, but I felt that Awkwafina's inherent likeableness really made the show work. 

Also, the action. Renfield gains vamp powers by eating insects, and there are a lot of bloody, comicbook-style fights. Like, piles of corpses in the courtyard gory. If you like this kind of thing, you should watch this. If you don't, I don't think the rest of this movie will make it worthwhile. 

MK Ultra

I went into Ultrasound (2022) knowing very little. I was afraid it was going to be pregnancy body horror. That was not the case - it's reality horror.

Vincent Kartheiser is driving back from a friend's wedding on a rainy night. He hits some nail strips and blows all four tires. He notices something odd - a breakfast tray with a coffee carafe and some cups, etc. But that draws his eyes to a house a little ways off the road. He heads there and meets Robert Stephenson, a shlubby, John-C.-Reilly-esque guy and his young, drab wife, Chelsea Lopez. They are welcoming if awkward, and invite him to stay until a wrecker can come in the morning. It gets even more awkward when Stephenson invites him to sleep with Lopez.

Later, when Kartheiser is at home in his little apartment, Stephenson shows up. Kartheiser freaks out, worried that he is being stalked, and doesn't want to talk to him. But Stephenson reminds him he had helped him out before, and shows him a video on his phone. Lopez is pregnant. This sort of explains the mysterious shots of women in workout clothes sometimes pregnant, sometimes not. 

When Lopez shows up, they start to live together. When she is ready to deliver, they get in the car. It's a rainy night. And then...

And then the real movie starts. If you haven't watched, I recommend skipping the rest of this and just watching the movie. The rest isn't very spoilery, but it works better if you go in cold. So, we find Kartheiser in a hospital, working with Breeda Wool. He is in a wheelchair and his therapy seems to be reciting lines from his conversations with Lopez and Stephenson, with Wool supplying the other side. Lopez is going through something similar. 

Also, there is a young woman who is having an affair with an important man. He's trying to make sure she doesn't out their affair, and Stephenson seems to be helping in some way - in fact, he seems to be the important man, but that guy is young and handsome Chris Garlin. Things we have seen turn out to be not what they seem.

It's funny that we watched this reality-bender right after World on a Wire. Although this one has a lot more moving parts. It did a good job keeping us guessing.

WoW

I ordered up World on a Wire (1973) on a whim, without looking it it too deeply. I had heard about it on some podcast or other, and understood it to be "The Matrix before it was a thing." It's possible I was thinking of The Thirteenth Floor, a remake. Anyway, this one turns out to be a TV miniseries by Rainier Werner Fassbinder. It came on two disks - the first disc had what seemed to be a full movie, around two hours long. I don't know what's on the second disc, we didn't look. Also, running times for this are quoted as 3 hours, 200 minutes, and various others. Maybe the movie we watched was a cut down of the series? Maybe we only watched Part 1? If you know, don't tell us. We liked our experience well enough.

It takes place in a mod corporate 70s, in the offices and labs of a virtual reality company. Some investors have shown up to meet the chief engineer. We find out that the company has a virtual world simulation, with 9,000 simulated people in it. But the engineer is acting weird - talking about identity and reality. He is later found dead. 

His replacement, Klaus Lowitsch, discusses this with the head of security, and finds there are some disquieting things going on. But when he tries to follow up, he finds that the security head doesn't exist, never had. Everyone remembers the "new" head of security as having been around for years.

Along with the promotion to chief engineer. Lowitsch gets a hot new secretary, Barbara Valentin. His old secretary, who he was close to, is sick, and doesn't think she will ever get well. He starts going into the simulation to get to the bottom of this. The only simulated person who knows that he is a simulation is called Einstein. He wants out to the real world - but he isn't real, just a simulation.

The reveals in this movie come slowly, and somewhat vaguely. In our modern times, we pick it up pretty quick. But for us, the joys of the movie were in the style - the corporate offices, the slightly mod suits, the glamorous secretaries, the glass surfaces and deep focus shots. We started this movie late, watched in a trance until we fell asleep - in our own virtual reality - then finished the next night. 

I think this is the only Fassbinder we've seen. We enjoyed it but it may be enough.